Wednesday

Feb 26, 2014 at 1:07 PMFeb 26, 2014 at 1:07 PM

Bill Brady came painfully close to becoming governor in 2010, losing to Gov. Pat Quinn by 46.79 percent to 45.94 percent. He was popular locally, winning Boone County with 60 percent of the vote, Winnebago County with 56 percent, and Stephenson County with 63 percent. Brady won 98 of Illinois' 102 counties.

Now Brady, a Republican state senator, home builder and real-estate businessman from Bloomington, is back in the race and hoping the second time is the charm. First, he has to win the GOP primary against state Sen. Kirk Dillard, Treasurer Dan Rutherford and venture capitalist Bruce Rauner.

Brady met Monday with the Editorial Board, and here's some of what he had to say.

"If we're going to turn the state around, we're going to need to take bold initiatives. My opponents say they're for pension reform, but when they had the chance to vote for it, they ran away," said Brady, a member of the special committee that negotiated the final bill.

"It's a chance to save $180 billion. It wasn't perfect, but it was necessary" to begin making the state fiscally sound.

The next step, Brady said, is tax reduction. He promised to use the money from pension savings to cut taxes, saying that high taxes in Illinois have driven businesses out of the state, resulting in the loss of 160,000 jobs in the past six years.

Another thing Brady said he'd do is to make further reforms in worker's compensation. Partial reform took place a few years ago, "but that only deals with medical costs, not causation."

Brady said that the Illinois minimum wage should stay at $8.25, a dollar more than the federal minimum.

He also wants to dismantle the State Board of Education and put education under the governor's office. "The board is really not accountable to anybody. We should eliminate the state bureaucracy." Brady would empower local regional superintendents of education and make their boundaries coterminous with community college districts.

"We need to move away from the several decades-long opinion that every student who graduates from high school should get a four year baccalaureate degree. I want to see an opportunity for a student to leave high school with a two year associates degree in either a vocational career designed to meet the community's economic needs, or leave high school with a two-year associates degree and go on to get a baccalaureate degree." That would reduce student loan debt, he said. Brady also wants state education tax dollars to follow a student, and not be distributed according to complicated formulas.

What does Brady think about the proposed airport at Peotone, backed strongly by Quinn?

"I'm not for any more government money going for that. It would be up to Will County and the private sector to make that work."

On Medicaid, Brady wants to change the system to give people an incentive to not think of it as "free" health care.

"We have to preserve the integrity of Medicaid, make sure ineligible people aren't getting into it. I'd like to have Medicaid savings accounts and we need a federal waiver to do that. Cash from Medicaid would go into a Medicaid savings account and you spend it as you need it."

And he wants to encourage less nursing home care and encourage alternatives like home care, to reduce the costs of Medicaid for the elderly.

Brady had some harsh words for Rauner: "We don't know where he is on minimum wage, we don't know where he is on anything, and we know he's closely aligned with Rahm Emanuel. I've got people in Chicago who tell me he was the impetus for the 67 percent tax increase, with all his Chicago cohorts."

Brady wants to return to cumulative voting so every House district again has three members, with at least one being from the minority party. Brady would limit people to serving no more than 10 years in the legislature.

He doesn't believe in a tax on services; he does support the so-called Amazon.com tax, to make online shoppers pay the same as they'd pay at a store.

Brady would implement a 35-year capital improvement plan, "where we're reinvesting equal amounts in every region. If we're going to put $1 million into an area, we need to put $1 million plus inflation in the next year."

Brady also promised to cap state spending and use new revenue to pay down bills and cut taxes.

Chuck Sweeny: 815-987-1366; csweeny@rrstar.com; @chucksweeny

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